Tuesday, September 8, 2015

In the winter of that year, I fell into Gentlemen. It seemed to me that I had found something that I had
been seeking for a while. Like a nearly still pool it showed me a familiar
face, twisted slightly by the currents.

Greg Dullis narrator became my alter ego, he became the voice in my head who guided me in my
wanderings. He became the whisper I heard when I was dressing, when I was
ordering the first drink of the evening. I should have known there was
something wrong when I could hear him. You shouldn’t hear anyone if they aren’t
right there.

The Afghan Whigs - Debonair - Gentlemen (1993)

It was a hateful voice, a slow amaretto poison seeping into my ear,
slaking a familiar thirst. It was a draught to get drunk on, in the sweetness
of the winter. It threw up visions greater than I had seen for years, warm
flickering visions. It was soaked up by the limestone of my heart.

I didn’t know it then, but I was not well. I found out much
later when a fortune teller in the mountains told me that there had been a
cloud over my mind in those months. I realized then, that, yes, there had
been a long shadow over that winter.

There was one hallway I walked down, in the middle of the
night. I remember it because it seemed to go on forever, floored with marble,
lined with bronze statues. It opened onto elegant alcoves with staircases and
chandeliers. There were mirrors on the walls in gilt frames. As I passed them, I remember taking pride in
the leanness of my jaw, in the cut of my jacket, in the click of my heels on
the floor, in the secret of my conquest.

It’s taken almost a year for me to write about this album,
and I’ve heard it more than a few times in that year. Finally the whole thing
is in the rear view mirror. These are the scrapes and bruises you only see the
morning after. And Gentlemen was the
morphine that kept my teeth from grinding to dust.

The Afghan Whigs - My Curse - Gentlemen (1993) - Live in 1994

I’m better now. I can recognize my cruelties, and I can mumble apologies to myself. Now, I can see Gentlemen for what it is – an exceptional work of art, the diary of
a disease, an exploration of a cancer. Those guitars don’t play for me when I
lean across a table. That sweet angelic voice no longer speaks to me. I see
true images, upside down and smaller than my desires.

It feels good to be whole again. I'm not the man those actions would suggest.

(Maybe you should just listen to the whole album in studio perfection)